There has long been one excuse or another for not delivering on political promises to protect children's rights better in the Irish Constitution. "Unless we do it, to my mind all the rest is just talk", said Mary O'Rourke, former chair of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitutional Amendment on Children, at the Merriman Summer School last Thursday.

And there will be no referendum on children's rights this year, even though other promised referendums are going ahead. Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has claimed that the last government did too little of the necessary legal groundwork to allow a referendum to happen yet.

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